Against this backdrop of reality programming, where idol celebrity is mythologized via demystification, the K-drama Dream High enacts the fantasy that idol celebrity can be systematically deconstructed and accessible to fans yet retain its appeal--in other words, the fantasy that stars are simultaneously ordinary and auratic.

Chapter four, titled "Exhibiting the Disappeared: Visual Arts and Auratic Distance", focuses on a touring show and collective exhibition The Disappeared which was organized and started by the North Dakota Museum of Art.

While in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Walter Benjamin famously argued that cinema is the art form that maybe best symbolizes the loss of the auratic aspect of the world, and the main orientation of contemporary film criticism is oriented toward instrumental and socio-economic analyses of film production and distribution, it has been remarked that the phenomenology of cinema--its affective impact on the spectator--is deeply tied to other forms of experience:

The phenomenon of the many forms of the goddess also dispenses with the aura as conferring sanctity to any single form, allowing for a dispersed sense of the auratic through the pandals that dot the city, like multiple points of illumination.

In his Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture, Philip Auslander also elaborates on Benjamin's thesis ("to pry an object from its shell") to further his own argument that the politics and aesthetics of reproduction have now dis-placed the auratic and unique quality of live performance completely and confounded it with mediatized performance: "following Benjamin, I might argue that live performance has indeed been pried from its shell and that all performance modes, live or mediatized, are now equal: none is perceived as auratic or authentic; the live performance is just one more reproduction of a given text or one more reproducible text" (50).

Readers will find here alert and fluent readings of the zutiste's resolutely antagonistic stance towards the auratic authority of Parnassian patriarchs; thoughtful comments on the appropriation of the (rather bourgeois) micro-cultural formation of the "cercle" (72-73) and the "album"; some fine contributions to readings of texts such as "Le Sonnet du trou du cul," and an especially suggestive account of a dizain parodying Coppee entitled "Le sous-chef est absent du bureau.

All content on this website, including dictionary, thesaurus, literature, geography, and other reference data is for informational purposes only. This information should not be considered complete, up to date, and is not intended to be used in place of a visit, consultation, or advice of a legal, medical, or any other professional.